His Father's Second Chance
by SurferSquid
Summary: AU putterings. What if Ben was Luke's clone? Not recommended for Luke shippers.


Luke was lonely.

He was not alone; the Praxeum contained more family than a man could ever ask for, dozens of bright Force-recruits hungry for training, ready to become the generation of Jedi that would fill the void shot in the galaxy by the Empire. He could barely take two steps down the ancient stone halls of that edifice without being the recipient of a wondering gaze, a curious voice. His days were filled with teaching, his nights with meditating on how to be a more effective teacher.

And yet, he was still lonely. It was a different sort of lonely, the kind that made him wonder if this was how his Uncle Lars had felt watching his sandy-haired nephew disappear past dunes that same sun-baked hue, not knowing if he'd ever see those earnest blue eyes again, if that life would end in smoldering ruin (ironically, his own would, and much sooner than he expected).

Luke wanted to be more than a teacher to someone. He wanted to be what he had never had from his own father. Part of him felt like this would be a sort of atonement for his family, a chance to set things right again after so much had gone so wrong. And he had watched Leia and Han raise their children and something inside of him ached, made him remember those precious few minutes he had spent with his own father—not Vader any more, but Anakin, a man ready to spend the twilight moments of his life with the son he never got the chance to know. And then, Anakin was gone, spirited away into the Force leaving behind only a broken body, obsidian armor…and a legacy.

That was why he had gone to _them_. They were the undisputed best at their craft, it was true, and although the cold and calculating way with which they went about their business was off-putting, they could get the results he needed. There came days of long waits, Artoo standing questioningly at his side, the droid's dome slowly rotating to take in the pristinely organic architecture and the ceaseless rain beating on the windows and making the astromech's melancholy whistles all the more haunting. Luke couldn't really expect him to understand what was going on, not yet. But in time, perhaps the little machine could come to accept this new addition.

As the monotonous days of endless water drifted slowly by, Luke allowed his thoughts to wander. He hoped everyone at the Praxeum was getting along well without him, although they always seemed to when he was called away on business. That was one of the marvelous things about the Order: the way everyone took care of each other. Like a family. Everything seemed to come back to family. He wondered what the others would say when he came back with his acquisition. Surely they would be accepting, willing to help him in whatever way they could.

Reminiscing helped pass the hours. Of course there were plenty of memories of battles won, space stations exploded, awards honored, as well as personalities shifting in and out of his life like comets in an intricate orbital dance, some staying close and some shooting back into the stars from whence they came, perhaps never to be seen by him again. Mara Jade was one of those. The flame-haired former Emperor's Hand seemed as if she might join the Praxeum, but instead decided to go soar out amongst the stars, in some nebulous quest to find herself. Luke hoped she would; he didn't think someone like her would feel satisfied with the Order. He was sure the Force had other plans for her.

Finally, the time came when Luke was escorted into a laboratory chamber, feeling small flanked by his stretch-necked associates, and he beheld the tiny body floating in its artificial amniotic fluid, electrodes leading to a dozen monitoring apparatuses. _So this is what I looked like, _turned out to be his first thought. It struck him as selfish but not surprising; after all, it wasn't like he had been privy to any family holos like children with less tumultuous origins.

"Does it suit your specifications, Master Skywalker?" one of his white-skinned agents asked, focusing her ring-eyed gaze on her client. "We made sure to keep the growth process at a normal biological rate, as per your request."

Luke tried hard not to be put off by the cold, unfeeling, businesslike manner in which life was spoken of on this world. He wondered if these people even knew how to feel the Force any more, calculating as they were toward its vehicles. "He's perfect," he affirmed, stepping reverently toward the unborn babe, so new and unaware of the immense galaxy surrounding it, whose world right now merely consisted of warmth and nutrients and vague impressions of sound muted by its synthetic womb. Soon, though, its experiences would expand rapidly.

Luke felt something light and beautiful swelling within him and he grinned widely. So, this was what it felt like to really love someone, to cherish them and want to protect them and provide for them and give them all they needed. He wondered if anyone else had ever had this idea, some other lonely man wanting a small life to raise.

"…You need a name," Luke finally said, his eyes not leaving the curled-up frame. As soon as the words left his mouth, one came to mind. "Ben. That's a name you'll live up to. Ben Skywalker. Welcome to life."

"Hey, Ben!"

The sandy-haired youth whipped his head around, nearly falling off of the stone outcropping where he had perched, if it weren't for the fact that he had caught himself with the Force and pushed himself back into balance. He had been meditating at one of the many waterfalls around the Praxeum, trying to lose himself and find the Force in the humid serenity of the jungles of Yavin 4.

Of course, that was a tall order for a nine-year-old boy; even more so when his friends were out looking for him.

"Ben, there you are!" the lilting female voice called out again, its owner swinging herself up onto the rock to sit beside the blue-eyed boy. Asca was another young student at the Praxeum, a year younger than Ben but just as precocious and that was probably why they were friends. The Arkanian eased herself into a cross-legged position mirroring the Human boy's, her long white hair and thin cotton robes ruffling in the slight, heavy breeze. Asca's ethereal countenance was offset by the bulky black pair of eye-blinders she was required to wear outdoors in order to soften the harsh glare of the Yavin system's young sun. "You should have told me you were coming here! I would have come with you!"

"I think the point of meditating is to try _not_ to be distracted," Ben pointed out with a mischievous grin.

Asca adjusted her blinders and chuckled, watching as a few brightly-colored birds took off from the treetops, silhouetted against Yavin, milky-orange through layers of its moon's atmosphere. They were silent for a while before she spoke again. "Tionne says you're a clone. Is that true?"

"Yep." Ben's father had never kept that a secret from the boy, and Ben never really saw anything wrong with it—it was just the way he had been born. Other people had parents, he had an exact replica of someone's genetic sequence. No one at the praxeum treated him any differently because of it, and that was what mattered.

"Huh." Asca leaned back. "Why?"

This was a new question. "What do you mean?" The sandy-haired boy looked over at his friend.

"Why'd Master Skywalker clone himself? Didn't he ever love anyone enough to marry her?"

That was an awkward question. Ben just shrugged. "I dunno." His father's love life was none of his business, and was not something Luke ever mentioned anyway. It was difficult for Ben to picture (even more so because he was a ten-year-old boy). His father had always been such a solitary figure—Luke didn't really need anyone to complete him, Ben thought. Did that mean…Luke didn't need Ben, either? The boy frowned.

"Did he not want his genetics soiled?"

"What?"

"Maybe that's why he had himself cloned," Asca explained, matter-of-factly. Genetic purity was something very strictly monitored in her society and she had grown up with it as a fact of life before coming here. She had been surprised to learn that in most other species' cultures, people married because they were attracted to each other, not because they deemed each other the most genetically compatible for producing pureblooded offspring. To her, that was natural and it made sense for someone as wise and farsighted as Master Skywalker to take this route.

Ben, however, was shocked and confused. Was that really why his father had done such a thing, so the genetic purity of the Skywalker line would remain unsullied? Would Ben be expected to clone himself a son when he grew up?

He mumbled something about having to go and then scrambled down the other side of the rock face, leaving behind a bewildered Arkanian who also began to climb down, not wanting to be left out in the jungle alone. She decided she would go see what the other child students were doing as she sensed that Ben did not particularly want to be around her at the moment.

Ben didn't want to be angry with Asca. He knew that people from different species and cultures often had ways of looking at the galaxy that differed from his (and were clearly weird, despite his father saying to respect all views). But what she had said had given the boy a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, and his short legs carried him swiftly back to his ancient temple home.

"Dad! Hey, Dad!" he called, his voice bouncing eternally off aged stone. Ben could feel his father's Force signature near the archives; Luke was so constantly busy that for someone out of touch with the Force, tracking the man down would be a nearly impossible task, and of course there was always the chance that he had been called off-planet on some mission of galactic importance.

But for now, he was home, and accessible. And napping. The Grand Master was relaxed in a chair in one of the reading rooms ancillary to the praxeum's library, his hand still limply clutching a datapad. It was one of those rare days where no one had needed himself for anything after spending a morning training and instructing, and his weary body was determined to make the best of it.

His body also liked to forget it had a rambunctious son. "Daaaaaad!" Ben rushed into the room and unceremoniously jumped up onto his father's legs, startling the man into awakening with a surprised choke. Ben watched as Luke's blue eyes opened and Ben found himself staring into his own face in thirty-odd years—for the first time he realized how strange this was.

"Ben, what's wrong?" Luke asked, sitting up and quickly removing the datapad from his lap where it had nearly been crushed by the overwhelming force of a rampaging ten-year-old. "What happened?"

"Why did you clone yourself?"

"…Oh." The Jedi Master let out a sigh and allowed himself to sit back, running a hand through his sandy hair. He was too used to people calling his name frantically because he was their only hope, or because they had accidentally lost a limb during sparring.

"Asca thinks you might have done it because you didn't want to spoil your genes," Ben pressed, his hands gripping his father's shoulders as he crouched on the man's lap and glared fiercely, looking as serious as a young boy could, even when that young boy was a Jedi. "Is that true?" Ben was bothered by this. He preferred to think his father wanted him because his father loved him.

"No," Luke replied immediately, his tone stern. He could see and sense that the boy was troubled by this theory.

"Then why?"

The Jedi Master lifted his son off of himself and stood up, depositing the boy on the floor and sitting down cross-legged. He didn't even have to gesture for Ben to do the same. "Ben, have you ever wanted something very badly, but couldn't get it?"

"I want a lightsaber," Ben reminded him for what had probably been the fiftieth time this week, hands on his ankles as he brought the soles of his boots together.

Luke chuckled. "Something that many other people have, and by all rights you should be able to, as well, but things keep…falling through?"

"A lightsaber," Ben repeated adamantly. Clearly ten was a responsible age to start learning to handle the real, deadly weapon and finally graduate from unforgivably boring training sabers.

Luke knew Ben's mind all too well, for it was his own. The boy was listening beneath his ambitious protestations. "I wanted…a family. For a long time. Your grandfather…wasn't really there for me." Luke hadn't yet told Ben the saga of Anakin Skywalker. Not only was it a sensitive subject, but it would be a few more years before there was less of a chance of Ben taking the biography entirely the wrong way and running around pretending to be a Sith Lord.

"Your grandmother died shortly after Leia and I were born. And my aunt and uncle were killed when I was young. At first, I thought I might get married someday." He looked thoughtful and distant. "But after I started the praxeum, I realized that that was where my life was. I couldn't devote myself wholly to the Jedi Order if I had a woman in my life who constantly needed my attentions. Leia saps a good chunk of my time as it is," he added wryly. "But I still wanted a family. So I settled on the idea of a son."

"You could have adopted," Ben pointed out. It seemed sort of selfish to create an entirely new person when there were so many other children out there in desperate need of better homes.

"I could have," Luke agreed. "But…it just didn't feel right. I wanted someone who came from me. If not by a wife, then by cloners." He grinned, knowing what Ben was thinking. "Yeah, I guess it was pretty selfish, if you look at it that way. But I think it was still the right choice." He reached over and tousled the boy's hair, reminded of his own wind-tossed mop at that age. "I never knew my father growing up. I guess in you I wanted to create…another me to experience what I missed the first time around."

Ben gave Luke the confused look the Jedi Master was expecting. The boy would understand in time. "…If you say so." Ben did have to admit that he thought growing up without a father would be pretty lousy.

"So no, it has nothing to do with 'preserving my genetics'," Luke assured his son. "Do yourself a favor and don't listen to Arkanians' advice on offspring. Asca is a smart girl but she is a little outspoken. I cloned myself because I wanted to give my childhood a second chance. You are precious to me, Ben." Luke grinned. "So don't think I will allow you to wander around outside the praxeum without adult supervision."

Ben groaned and rolled his eyes. Keeping secrets from your Jedi Master father was impossible. Not that he would quit testing the man's seeming omniscience.

"Let's meditate together," Luke suggested, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

"Okay." Ben refolded his legs and tried to concentrate. It seemed easier with his father around. Because Ben was not just Luke's son, but Luke's clone, there seemed to be some remarkably strong bond between them, emotionally and with the Force. That could prove to be useful, Ben thought. He also didn't quite know what to think about being his father's second chance.

Opening one eye, Ben looked up and saw Luke meditating, felt the Force flowing serenely through him. The man had a wide, almost blissful smile on his face.

Ben got the distinct impression Luke was thinking about how overjoyed he was to have a son.


End file.
